We have now described the entire scale of evolution. Looking back upon it, we can see its inner significance. The Absolute is reason, matterless form. Everything in the world, therefore, is, in its essence, reason. If we wish to know the essential nature even of this clod of earth, the answer is that it is reason, although this view is not consistently developed by Aristotle, since he allows that matter is a separate principle which cannot be reduced to form. The whole universal process of things is nothing but the struggle of reason to express itself, to actualize itself, to become existent in the world. This it definitely does, for the first time proximately in man, and completely in the stars. It can only express itself in lower beings as sensation (animals), as nutrition (plants), or as gravitation and its opposite (inorganic matter).
The value of Aristotle's theory of evolution is immense. It is not the details that signify. The application of the principle in the world of matter and life could not be carried out satisfactorily in the then state of physical science. It could not be carried out with perfection even now. Omniscience alone could give finality to such a scheme. But it is the principle itself which matters. And that it is one of the most valuable conceptions in [{308}] philosophy will perhaps be more evident if we compare it, firstly, with modern scientific theories of evolution and secondly, with certain aspects of Hindu pantheism.
What has Aristotle in common with such a writer a Herbert Spencer? According to Spencer, evolution is a movement from the indefinite, incoherent, and homogeneous, to the definite, coherent, and heterogeneous. Aristotle has all this, though his words are different. He calls it a movement from matter to form. Form he describes as whatever gives definiteness to a thing. Matter is the indefinite substrate, form gives it definiteness. Hence for him too the higher being is more definite because it has more form. That matter is the homogeneous, form the heterogeneous, follows from this. We saw that there are in matter itself no differences, because there are no qualities. And this is the same as saying it is homogeneous. Heterogeneity, that is, differentiation, is introduced by form. Coherence is the same thing as organization. Aristotle has himself defined the form of a thing as its organization. For him, as for Spencer, the higher being is simply that which is more organized. Every theory of evolution depends fundamentally upon the idea of organism. Aristotle invented the idea and the word. Spencer carried it no further, though the more advanced physical knowledge of his day enabled him to illustrate it more copiously.
But of course the great difference between Aristotle and the moderns, is that the former did not guess, what the latter have discovered, namely that evolution is not only a logical development, but is a fact in time. Aristotle knew what was meant by the higher and lower organism as well as Darwin, but he did not know, that the latter [{309}] actually turns into the former in the course of years. But this, though the most obvious, is not really the most important difference between Spencer and Aristotle. The real difference is that Aristotle penetrated far more deeply into the philosophy of evolution than modern science does; that, in fact, modern science has no philosophy of evolution at all. For the fundamental problem here is, if we speak of higher and lower beings, what rational ground have we for calling them higher and lower? That the lower passes in time into the higher is no doubt a very interesting fact to discover, but it dwindles into insignificance beside the problem just indicated, because, on the solution of that problem it depends whether the universe is to be regarded as futile, meaningless, and irrational, or whether we are to see in it order, plan, and purpose. Is Spencer's doctrine a theory of development at all? Or is it not rather simply a theory of change? Something resembling an ape becomes a man. Is there development here, that is, is it a movement from something really lower to something really higher? Or is it merely change from one indifferent thing to another? Is there improvement, or only difference? In the latter case, it makes not the slightest difference whether the ape becomes man, or man becomes an ape. The one is as good as the other. In either case, it is merely a change from Tweedledum to Tweedledee. The change is meaningless, and has no significance.
The modern doctrine of evolution can only render the world more intelligible, can only develop into a philosophy of evolution, by showing that there is evolution and not merely change, and this it can only do by [{310}] giving a rational basis for the belief that some forms of existence are higher than others. To put the matter bluntly, why is a man higher than a horse, or a horse than a sponge? Answer that, and you have a philosophy of evolution. Fail to answer it, and you have none. Now the man in the street will say that man is higher than the horse, because he not merely eats grass, but thinks, deliberates, possesses art, science, religion, morality. Ask him why these things are higher than eating grass, and he has no answer. From him, then, we turn to Spencer, and there we find a sort of answer. Man is higher because he is more organized. But why is it better to be more organized? Science, as such, has no answer. If pressed in this way, science may of course turn round and say: "there is in the reality of things no higher and no lower; what I mean by higher and lower is simply more and less organized; higher and lower are mere metaphors; they are the human way of looking at things; we naturally call higher what is nearest ourselves; but from the absolute point of view there is no higher and lower." But this is to reduce the universe to a madhouse. It means that there is no purpose, no reason, in anything that happens. The universe, in this case, is irrational. No explanation of it is possible. Philosophy is futile, and not only philosophy, but morality and everything else. If there is really no higher and lower, there is no better and no worse. It is just as good to be a murderer as to be a saint. Evil is the same as good. Instead of striving to be saints, statesmen, philosophers, we may as well go and play marbles, because all these values of higher and lower are mere delusions, "the human way of looking at things."
Spencer then has no answer to the question why it is better to be more organized. So we turn at last to Aristotle. He has an answer. He sees that it is meaningless to talk of development, advance, higher and lower, except in relation to an end. There is no such thing as advance unless it is an advance towards something. A body moving purposelessly in a straight line through infinite space does not advance. It might as well be here as a mile hence. In either case it is no nearer to anything. But if it is moving towards a definite point, we can call this advance. Every mile it moves it gets nearer to its end. So, if we are to have a philosophy of evolution, it must be teleological. If nature is not advancing towards an end, there is no nearer and further, no higher and lower, no development. What then is the end? It is the actualization of reason, says Aristotle. The primal being is eternal reason, but this is not existent. It must come to exist. It first enunciates itself vaguely as gravitation. But this is far off from its end, which is the existence of reason, as such, in the world. It comes nearer in plants and animals. It is proximately reached in man, for man is the existent reason. But there is no question of the universe coming to a stop, when it reaches its end--(the usual objection to teleology). For the absolute end, absolute form, can never be reached. The higher is thus the more rational, the lower the less rational. Now if we try to go on asking, "why is it better to be more rational?" we find we cannot ask such a question. The word "why" means that we want a reason. And our question is absurd because we are asking a reason for reason. Why is it better to be rational means simply, "how is reason rational." To [{312}] doubt it is a self-contradiction. Or, to put the same thing in another way, reason is the Absolute. And to ask why it is better to be rational is to demand that the ultimate should be expressed in terms of something beyond it. Hence modern science has no philosophy of evolution, whereas Aristotle has. [Footnote 16]
[Footnote 16: See H. S. Macran's Hegel's Doctrine of Formal Logic (Clarendon Press), Introduction, section on the Conception of Evolution, to which I am much indebted in the above paragraphs.]
The main idea of pantheism is that everything is God. The clod of earth is divine because it is a manifestation of Deity. Now this idea is all very well, and is in fact essential to philosophy. We find it in Aristotle himself, since the entire world is, for him, the actualization of reason, and reason is God. But this is also a very dangerous idea, if not supplemented by a rationally grounded scale of values. No doubt everything is, in a sense, God. But if we leave it at this, it would follow that, since everything is equally divine, there is no higher and lower. If the clod of earth, like the saintliest man, is God, and there is no more to say of the matter, then how is the saint higher than the clod of earth? Why should one ever struggle towards higher things, when in reality all are equally high? Why avoid evil, when evil is as much a manifestation of God as good? Mere pantheism must necessarily end in this calamitous view. And these deplorable effects explain the fact that Hinduism, with all its high thinking, finds room for the worship of cows and snakes, and, with all its undoubted moral elevation, yet allows into its fold the grossest abominations. Both these features are due to the pantheistic placing of all things on a par as equally [{313}] divine. Not of course that Hinduism has not a sort of doctrine of evolution, a belief in a higher and lower. As everyone knows, it admits the belief that in successive incarnations the soul may mount higher and higher till it perhaps rejoins the common source of all things. There is probably no race of man so savage that it does not instinctively feel that there is a higher and lower, a better and worse, in things. But the point is that, although Hinduism has its scale of values, and its doctrine of development, it has no rational foundation for these, and though it has the idea of higher and lower, yet, because this is without foundation, it lets it slip, it never grips the idea, and so easily slides into the view that all is equally divine. The thought that all is God, and the thought that there are higher and lower beings, are, on the surface, opposed and inconsistent theories. Yet both are necessary, and it is the business of philosophy to find a reconciliation. This Aristotle does, but Hinduism fails to do. It asserts both, but fails to bring them to unity. Now it asserts one view, and again at another time it asserts the other. And this, of course, is connected with the general defect of oriental thinking, its vagueness. Everything is seen, but seen in a haze, in which all things appear one, in which shapes flow into another, in which nothing has an outline, in which even vital distinctions are obliterated. Hence it is that, though oriental thought contains, in one way or another, practically all philosophical ideas, it grips none, and can hold nothing fast. It seizes its object, but its flabby grasp relaxes and slips off. Hinduism, like modern science, has its doctrine of evolution. But it has no philosophy of evolution.